[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Systems Thinking Principles for Making Change

## Details

**Authors** Reynolds, Martin

**Year** 2024

**Publisher** Systems

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Systems Science

**Secondary disciplines** Business & Management

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.3390/systems12100437) 
10.3390/systems12100437

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To distil a 'requisite systems literacy' of simple, accessible principles for busy practitioners, in place of further tools or laws, and to bridge what the author calls the over-systemic and over-systematic poles of systems work.

### How they did it (methods)

A conceptual monograph. It synthesizes Ulrich's boundary critique, Checkland's hard-soft distinction, Ison's first- and second-order practice, Weick's bricolage and Jackson's critical systems practice into a heuristic of situations, practitioners and systems, and an accompanying activity model. No empirical data are reported; the author grounds the principles in work with Open University practitioner alumni and action research since 2014.

### What they found (results)

The monograph proposes three principles of systems thinking in practice — relational, perspective and adaptive — each with first- and second-order operational sub-principles, nested under an overarching principle of systems thinking in practice as praxis. On DSRP, the author states that his activity model can be compared with a similar model based on the DSRP notation developed by Cabrera and colleagues, that there is not space to make that comparison here, and that an earlier paper of his contrasts DSRP's cognitive-science lineage with the pragmatist and critical-social-theory lineage of his own principles.

## Commentary

### In short

Reynolds proposes three principles of systems thinking in practice and places DSRP beside them as a comparable notation from a different intellectual lineage, deferring the comparison itself to his earlier work.

### In more detail

DSRP enters this monograph twice. In the main text, having set out an activity model for systems thinking in practice, Reynolds writes that it can be compared with a similar model for applying systems thinking based on the DSRP notation developed by Cabrera and colleagues, cites the 2015 Cabrera, Cabrera and Powers paper, states that there is not space here to make that comparison, and refers the reader to his 2008 response paper, which contrasts DSRP's cognitive-science lineage with the pragmatist and critical-social-theory lineage behind his own three principles. A footnote then sets out DSRP itself: four elements, named as distinctions, system, relationships and perspectives, each built on a duality, given as identity and other, part and whole, affect and effect, and subject and object. The footnote repeats that the author has examined DSRP against the boundary-critique theory underpinning his principles in that earlier paper. Nothing further is done with DSRP. The monograph's own framework is built on inter-relationships, perspectives and boundaries, and on a systemic triangulation of factual, value and boundary judgements, and Reynolds does not map those onto the four patterns, though the two schemes cover overlapping ground.

### Response

Reynolds gives each pattern with a duality rather than reducing the four to topic headings, which is the right shape for what DSRP claims. Two of the four dualities are not the theory's own. DSRP pairs relationships as action and reaction and perspectives as point and view; the footnote has affect and effect, and subject and object. The second substitution matters most: point-view is a structural pair, a vantage together with what is seen from it, whereas subject-object imports a distinction from a different tradition and makes perspective-taking look like a stance toward an object rather than a structure information takes. Beyond the footnote the engagement stops. The comparison between the DSRP notation and the activity model is named and then set aside for want of space, and the contrast actually drawn is genealogical — cognitive science on one side, pragmatism and critical social theory on the other. A difference in lineage is not a difference in truth claim, and the monograph tests neither account against the other. Readers wanting Reynolds's argument against DSRP are pointed to his 2008 paper; it is not made here.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-10-15

**How to cite this** Reynolds, Martin (2024). Systems Thinking Principles for Making Change. Systems.